No silence right now: I was laughing, loud and hard, and it was echoing through the rotunda of the S.O.B., filling the hollow, hallowed halls, startling the guard.
The flight from D.C. took maybe three hours, the bag handlers at Midway managed not to lose my suitcase, the ride to the Loop clocked thirty-eight minutes, and I was back in my suite at the St. Clair before noon on Monday.
Unfortunately, I was alone: no sign of my new roommate.
Not only was Jackie Payne absent from my apartment, so were her things—the clothes she’d hung in my bedroom closet, her toiletries, suitcases, everything. Gone. Like she’d never been here…
…except for the lingering fragrance of Chanel No. 5., in the bedroom particularly.
I got the front desk on the phone and asked the clerk to round up Hannan, the house dick. Hannan sometimes did jobs for me, and he was supposed to have been doing me a favor, while I was away.
Leaving Jackie even for twenty-four hours had been problematic. we’d spent Saturday together, mostly at my suite, loving each other, me assuring her that I was going to get her the best help for her problem. We’d gone to a picture show—a matinee of
“I’m afraid of him,” she’d said.
We were in bed, and the only light was courtesy of the lakefront and the moon through the window; she was nestled against me, her face against my chest. I was fooling with her hair, scratching and rubbing her scalp.
“No need,” I said, lying only a little. “Rocco’s going to have to watch himself where we’re both concerned.” She looked up at me, eyes a-glimmer with worry. “Why do you think that?”
“His brother Charley will keep him in line. Baby, Charley knows I’m capable of dishing out the same kind of… medicine as his brother. And one thing these goombahs don’t want right now is bad publicity.”
“Bad publicity…?”
“I’m the friend and associate of an ex-cop who’s going to testify against them in this crime inquiry. The curtain on that roadshow is going up soon—probably after the election, but soon—and the Fischettis of this world…the smart ones, anyway…don’t want the papers filled with stuff out of an old Jimmy Cagney movie.”
“You mean—they have to behave themselves?”
“That’s right.” If they were smart—but Rocco wasn’t smart; Charley had to be smart enough for both of them…which was the catch I didn’t explain to her.
So I had, seemingly, soothed her nerves and eased her fears; but I needed to take other steps, to soothe and ease my own.
Hannan had agreed to keep an eye on my suite and the precious contents therein; he and the night dick— Goorwitz, who also did occasional jobs for the A-l—would make sure she wasn’t disturbed. Both were reliable, at least as far as ex-cops went, and could handle themselves with Rocco should he, or any underling, come around. Hannan, in particular, was a hardcase, an ex-GI who survived the Battle of the Bulge.
I was pacing when knuckles rapped on my door; the peephole revealed red-headed, freckle-faced, blue-eyed Hannan, in a rumpled brown suit and brown felt fedora.
He stepped inside, saying, “She went out this morning. I saw her, and stopped her.”
“Stopped her?”
“In the lobby—a bellboy paged me, to let me know what was going on…I mean, that she had called down to get help with her luggage.”
At my directive, Hannan had alerted the staff to inform him of Jackie’s movements, and he’d shown around a picture of Rocco—which I’d plucked from Jackie’s wallet in her purse—so that clerks, bellboys, elevator attendants, and cleaning ladies would be on the lookout for that ugly face as well.
Hannan shrugged and held out his empty hands. “She said she was leaving, and I said you wouldn’t like it, and she said to say she was sorry.”
“Sorry.”
“A cab came for her, and she was gone. I couldn’t tail her, Nate—the follow-that-cab routine, I mean, it was out. I
I shook my head. “Hannan, that girl doesn’t have any free will—she’s on the damn spike.”
“And you were gonna get her off it, I suppose? Maybe that’s your answer—she decided she didn’t wanna get off it. You weren’t trying some cold turkey number on her, were you, Nate?”
“Hell no. I’m not that fucking stupid.” But I didn’t elaborate: I couldn’t tell the St. Clair’s house detective that I had been paying for her habit to be temporarily fed, that I’d arranged a delivery of H to hold her over, here at the hotel.
“She didn’t look like she was coming down, at that,” Hannan said.
Maybe he was wise to what I’d done.
“Listen…thanks. I appreciate it.” I dug into my pocket.
But Hannan put a hand on my suitcoat sleeve. “That C note you already gave me’ll do just fine…it let me spread some around and have plenty left for me. Hey, I didn’t do you much of a service, anyway, as it turns out…. Sorry, buddy.”
The hotel operator said, yes, she’d been working the switchboard on Sunday; and several calls had come through for my room yesterday, which she’d connected. So Jackie had taken calls meant for me—or had someone
